LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Times
October 26 2017
By Bernard Lagan
Sydney – The Australian Catholic Church believes it will be liable for at least A$1 billion (£583 million) in compensation payments to thousands of children who were sexually abused by the clergy.
The church has already paid at least A$300 million to victims, some of whom gave evidence to a royal commission that, when it concludes in December, will have taken testimony from 8,000 people abused as children by Catholic priests, other clergy and government staff.
The royal commission has proposed a national compensation scheme for victims, which caps payments to individuals at A$150,000. Much of the compensation will be paid by Australian taxpayers but the Catholic Church has assessed its own liabilities at about A$1 billion.
Francis Sullivan, chief executive of the Australian Catholic Church’s Truth, and Justice Healing Council, said: “Our analysis is that the national redress scheme proposed by the royal commission over a ten-year period was going to cost in total about A$4 billion and of about A$4 billion we think our exposure is A$1 billion.”
The royal commission has estimated that there were 4,000 institutions across Australia in which child sex abuse happened up until the early 1980s, including those run by the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, the Salvation Army and the government. Half of the institutions were operated by the Catholic Church.
Cardinal George Pell, the Vatican’s head of finances and a former leader of the Catholic Church in Australia, was among those to have appeared before the commission.
He was charged in June with historical sex offence charges in relation to multiple complainants. He has returned to Australia from the Vatican and his case will be heard by a court early next year.
Christian Porter, Australia’s social services minister, told parliament today that 20,000 victims were estimated to have been abused in government-run institutions and 40,000 in non-government facilities including 2,000 operated by the Catholic Church.
He said that the institutions’ response to the claims were inadequate, and announced laws that would set up the national compensation scheme for abuse victims.
“No child should ever experience what we know occurred,” he said. “The establishment of this scheme is an acknowledgment that sexual abuse suffered by children in institutions operated by a number of governments was wrong, a shocking betrayal of trust and simply should never have happened.”
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